


Hourglasses and Butterflies

by alliewrites



Category: Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Angst, Butterfly Effect, Consequences, Dream Smp, Established Relationship, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, Memory Loss, Minecraft but real life, Time Travel, Travelling back in time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-27
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-18 06:02:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29729430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alliewrites/pseuds/alliewrites
Summary: Karl was forgetting.He knew it, and Sapnap knew it. It wasn't unspoken, but neither had really grasped the reality of it until Sapnap brings home an hourglass as a present for their anniversary and Karl didn't even know the day held significance. It was inevitable, and neither of them could stop it.Their future was limited, so in desperation, Karl travels back to the past with a request.But, time is delicate, and actions have consequences.
Relationships: Clay | Dream/GeorgeNotFound (Video Blogging RPF), GeorgeNotFound & Karl Jacobs, Karl Jacobs/Sapnap
Comments: 5
Kudos: 39





	Hourglasses and Butterflies

The Butterfly Effect.

Defined from google as "the idea that small things can have non-linear impacts on a complex system". Described by most people as something so delicate as a butterfly flapping its wings in Canada could cause a tornado in Texas. Tens of thousands of articles on google, one mediocre movie, and several scientists all trying to understand how something insignificant could spiral into chaos.

Karl used to think it was stupid, impractical, impossible. That was before he started time travelling, but now it had finally started to make sense to him, and in the most simple of words he thought he knew how to explain it:

Time is delicate. 

Much like the butterfly's wings. It can't heal, not easily. One small tear in a wing would never be fixed, as as the butterfly flew around it would only get worse until it couldn't fly anymore. With time, even something so small and unimportant could create a catastrophe in the future and there was no way to mend the wound. 

It was the one rule of time travel: never change the course of events. Karl followed that rule religiously - he had read enough books and journals to know what would happen if he didn't. The people who had made the mistake always said the same thing: they regretted it. It always, without fail, completely rewrote the future and, every single time, it made it worse. 

But that didn't mean it wasn't tempting.

Every time Karl went to the past he was forced to watch as the tiniest little things spiralled - so of course, he had a list in his head of things he would change if he could figure out a way that he could. Maybe, just maybe, he would stop Wilbur from building L'maburg, or stop Tommy from burning George's house, or stop the button from being pressed. Or, maybe he could stop Quackity from spiralling into power-hungry madness. 

None of those things neared the top of his list, however.

"What are you thinking about?"

Karl glanced up from his book, the page he had been staring at for an hour was absent of words, only a small doodle of a flower that he drew out of habit. He was so caught up in his thoughts that he hadn't realized Sapnap had made himself at home in the chair right across the table, his elbows resting on the light wood and his head lazily resting in his hands. Karl tried to remember where he had been, but that fact seemed to flip past his mind. Whatever Sapnap had been up to that morning, it must've exhausted him.

"I'm just doing a bit of reading," he said, "Trying to organize the places I visited before, studying the older ones... just boring time travel stuff."

"You and I have very different definitions of boring" Sapnap remarked.

"It's mostly just a bunch of tales, it's not really interesting."

"I would listen to you read off the back of a cereal box... Come on, tell me a story! Where did you travel off to last night?"

Karl felt a smile grow, and let his mind wander as he explained to his lover about the magnificent world he had found himself in. It was in the past, maybe three hundred years ago, although he could never really find a date for it. It was way up north, tens of thousands of miles from where the Dream SMP would come to be located. It was covered in white snow, up to Karl's knees, and despite that, it was still so warm. In the daytime, it was blinding outside. At nighttime the snowflakes were large, falling from the sky and carrying the light so every single house was visible under an enchanting orange hue. 

Sapnap watched as Karl went on and on, recalling all the feelings and telling him the stories of all the people he met, and he leant his head in his hands. His eyes were calm, drowsy and so full of love. 

"What are you looking at?" Karl giggled, his cheeks burning a warm red.

"I'm looking at you" Sapnap hummed, "Your eyes light up when you talk about snow. You're beautiful."

"It was really nice out there. I hope I remember it."

The second sentence brought the weight down on his shoulders, and suddenly the gleam in his eyes had disappeared as he remembered what was really happening when he went on his travelling expeditions. It wasn't an unspoken subject between the two - they talked out about it all the time - but that didn't mean it hurt any less. 

"I brought you a gift," Sapnap said, shifting the tone of the conversation seamlessly and immediately. It was a skill he had picked up in the past couple of months: finding distractions with the snap of his fingers. Karl was grateful. Sapnap's lips curved into a sheepish smile and his back straightening a little. He reached down to his backpack on the floor, digging around until he found an item and then he brought it up and put it on the table.

It was an hourglass.

It was made of smooth polished wood, a shade lighter than dark oak but darker than regular oak. The sand it in flowed smoothly and steadily to the bottom of the glass. It was light, pristine. It was untouched by the unnatural and natural disasters that had dirtied the sand around the civilized area. It must've been found thousands of miles into the badlands, must've taken a long time to get.

"It's beautiful," Karl said, reaching over and picking it up. On the top of it, there was a swirl burnt on. The edges weren't very smooth, and it was a little wonky, but that didn't much bother him. It gave it more character.

"It took me a few weeks to make," Sapnap explained, scratching the back of his neck. His face turned several shades of red, "It's not much, I know, but I wanted to get you something personal. The sand is from that old site we visited on our second date, where you told me about the pirates that roamed there several years ago trying to find treasure."

"The Beach" Karl mumbled, recalling the name as he remembered it. He did remember it, of course he did. It was one of the first places he back in time travelled to, he read over the book he wrote about it every single day. It was a happy tale, a long one too, a search for a treasure that ended with smiling faces and new friendships.

"Yeah!" Sapnap seemed so excited that Karl remembered, "And then the wood is spruce! Which, if I recall, is your favourite!"

Karl nodded, his hands delicately tracing over the lines in the wood and the engravement. Under his breath, he mumbled the word spruce. He felt his smile drop a little. It wasn't because Spruce wasn't his favourite wood. It was! His entire house was made of it, he loved using it to decorate and always used to get into arguments over Sapnap as to why it was the best wood. But, up until that moment, he couldn't quite piece together what it was called. 

"I know it's stupidly cheesy, but I wanted to get you something for our anniversary," Sapnap said, his face full of excitement. Their anniversary.

Karl paused. At first, he was confused because it couldn't possibly be their anniversary - they became officially on...

He didn't remember, and the minute that he realized that he felt the overwhelming guilt seep into his veins. This wasn't a cruel joke, Sapnap wasn't one to play those, and that only meant one thing. He looked at the Calander hanging on the wall crookedly, the days all crossed off up until the 21st of April. That was today, and Karl knew the date because he wrote it in his diary entry while he ate his breakfast. 

Yet he had forgotten the significance of the day entirely.

"I-" he started to speak, but choked out an ugly sob instead and had to stop himself. He covered his mouth and closed his eyes, trying not to cry - he had no right to be upset - if anyone should be, it was Sapnap. He refused to make eye contact, he could bear to see the look on the other's face, he couldn't bear to see how badly he hurt him.

He felt so disorientated. Part of him hoped that maybe it was some practical joke - but there was no "just kidding" said, or "I'm just joking". There was just silence, shock, a heavy and unbearable tension in the room as neither knew what to say or how to go on from that.

Karl was only grounded when he felt a pair of arms wrap around him and pick him up from his chair, holding him in a tight hug and letting him rest his head on his shoulder.

"It's okay," Sapnap said, running his hands through Karl's hair trying to calm him down. But it was a lie, and both of them knew that. It wasn't okay, and it wasn't going to be okay, because it was only going to get worse from there.

"I forgot" Karl mumbled into his shoulder, warm tears running down his cheeks.

"I'm forgetting him."

It was three days later. Karl knew he was forgetting, he had it written on every single page of every diary he had written, and he knew it was getting worse. The names of the people he had visited in the snow had slipped away from him despite how short time it had been. He didn't remember the mission before that at all. He just never thought the universe would be so cruel as to make him forget something so important, something so dear to him.

It was a sick little game, being unable to remember that anniversary and yet the memory of that moment stayed so clear in his mind and the tears that Sapnap tried so hard to hide from Karl haunted him every minute of every waking hour.

"You knew it would happen eventually," George said, bluntly, picking up a small piece of red rock from the gravelly shore they were sat on and throwing it into the water. 

"I didn't think it would happen this quickly," Karl mumbled. He glanced down at it his hands where he held onto the hourglass. He treasured the small gift, he brought it everywhere. It calmed him down to run his fingers around on the swirl on top. On the bottom, he had gotten Sapnap to carve his name in with a knife, and the date of their anniversary. The hourglass was a piece of the two of them that he could bring everywhere. Karl supposed it acted as a bit of a safety net - some memories could come back with a reminder and the gift was just that: a reminder of the greatest love he had ever had.

If he always kept it with him, maybe, possibly, he wouldn't forget.

He set it down on the gravel in front of them, letting it start to tik down. He scrunched up his nose, detesting how quickly and smoothly the sand flew through the small opening.

Karl was always used to being a supportive friend. When Dream was sentenced to prison, he stayed up a whole night listening to George yell and cry and watching him throw things as he broke down. When Sapnap visited Dream, he didn't talk for days, and Karl laid beside him in bed and brought him food, and talked to him for the entire time. Maybe that's why it was so hard to open up.

It killed him to admit, "I don't know what to do."

"There's not much you can do." George sighed. He didn't attempt to sugar coat it, and maybe that's why Karl sought to talk to him over Quackity or Bad. Or maybe it was because George had lost more than Karl had ever imagined and despite that, he was still here, he was still making it through each day. He was proof that people could live on after the love of their life was ripped away from them. Karl hoped Sapnap would do the same.

"I hurt him." 

There were things that Karl didn't let Sapnap know, and things that Sapnap kept secret all the same. They had managed to have a good dinner that night, despite Karl forgetting some things, they laughed, they joked and they drank. There was a silent agreement between the two to forget about the events of the morning entirely. But long after they had gone to bed, at almost three in the morning, Karl was woken to his boyfriend crying beside him. It was quiet, muffled, and maybe it was the fact that he was trying so hard to keep his sadness a secret that really broke Karl.

"You didn't mean to," George said, "He knows that, and you know that."

"I don't want to forget him"

"I know."

The last bit of sand went through the bottom of the glass, and Karl sighed deeply, "Me and him, we're running out of time."

It was the first time he fully admitting the words out loud. 

There wasn't much said after that, and there wasn't much to say. They just sat in silence; George drawing little figures and shapes in the gravel with a stick he found, and Karl staring at the empty hourglass. The sun had started to set, the skies illuminating in bright pinks, oranges and yellows, and had it been a better day Karl would've made fun of George because he couldn't see it.

A small white butterfly started to circle Karl long after George had left, looking for flowers to land on. It hadn't gotten cold enough for it to go into hiding for the night. It landed on the hourglass, wandering around the top of it as if it was a flower. It was plain, but it was beautiful.

It had a rip in its right wing that was so large that it had almost split the entire wing in two.

Karl held out his hand, and the butterfly flew to him, perching on his index finger. He brought it up closer to him, "Your wing is ripped. But you can still fly."

The butterfly flapped its wings, and Karl took that as a response. It had ripped in the right spot, halfway through so that it could still catch the wind to move through the air. Karl hummed to himself, "I guess there are some rips that aren't as devastating as others."

"It's the first rule of time travel - never go and rewrite the past" Karl sighed, "But they mean don't go and change major events. I couldn't go back and stop Wilbur from pressing that button, I couldn't warn Alex about sharing those votes with Schlatt..."

He held his hand up to the sky and let the butterfly fly away. He watched as it flew up and up until it was only a mere speck, and then it disappeared completely.

"But what if I didn't want to change something significant."

He glanced down at the empty hourglass once again.

"All I want is more time with him."

But, he wasn't too sure if he had enough strength to do it. Truthfully he hadn't been sure about anything for a very long time.

He was only certain about one thing: he would shatter time if it meant that he got a few extra seconds with the man he loved. His plan was delusional, idiotic. But maybe, just maybe he could give them some extra time. That was all that truly mattered to him.

The first breath after he had stepped foot into the old world was always the best. It was fresh, it was clean and it brought back memories of the happiest moments of his life. The air had yet to be littered with the smoke from the first explosion of L'manburg, or the dust particles from the second. It had yet to be breathed by tyrants, only simple people who dreamed of bright futures or was it haunted with vengeful ghosts. It was the air you could take a deep breath of and finally feel calm. 

Karl came with a plan, he knew where he was going and he wasted no time going there - he sprinted there. Through L'manburg - old L'manburg - and past Tommy's old embassy and Tubbo's old house and through the community house and up the stairs until he reached the grassy mountain biome that had yet to be touched.

He knew he was risking everything.

In the back of his mind, he was tearing himself up, because there was one rule and he was breaking it. But somehow that doesn't much matter to him anymore. 

The only thing that matters to him is the boy with the white bandana sitting on a fallen-over piece of wood in front of a small ... of water, sharpening a tool with a stone. He was all alone, humming some ridiculous song to himself as he worked, and he was peaceful.

Once Karl saw him, all his doubts and thoughts disappeared. Sapnap, even now, months before they would actually meet for the first time, made his heart flutter. He was perfectly happy and content sitting and wasting time out by a pond for the afternoon - laughing at jokes he made to himself when he thought no one was around to hear.

He didn't notice Karl until the brown-haired boy was standing on the other side of the water, a few feet away from him.

He raised an eyebrow, but kept a friendly face, "Hi! Can I help you?"

"I.. uh..." Karl paused, not really knowing what to say, he hadn't really thought that part out, "...My name is Karl Jacobs"

"Sapnap," the other said, putting down his axe.

"I know who you are." Karl said, the weight of how strange the situation was started to dawn on him, but he let those thoughts slip away and kept focus on his objective, "You don't know me... but that's okay. I have a watch here, and if I'm correct today is July 28th..."

"Yeah?" 

"That means that we aren't supposed to meet for another two months and five days..." Karl said. He took a deep breath, "But we're meant to meet. We become friends quickly... and we fall in love..." he trailed off, but only for a second, "...We're going to have a great life together, you and I. We're going to explore this world, thousands of miles away from here, and eventually, we're going to make our own house together, and we're going to be so happy."

The locket slung around his neck, the same one that gave him the ability to travel, started to heat up. It started to burn so hot that it stung against his chest. In the corner of his eyes, Karl could see it start to glow, but he didn't look down at it, he continued to look at the man in front of him.

What he was doing was wrong, and time was trying to prevent the wound from being opened. It was trying to send him back - so he didn't have much time.

The wind started to pick up around him, starting out so light they barely noticed but then it got stronger, strong enough to knock over the axe balanced on the fallen-over tree. 

"I'm going to forget you," he says, bluntly. He reached into the satchel he brought, pulling out the small hourglass and holding it up, "You give this to me, as an anniversary present... and I... I forget our anniversary altogether."

Sapnap stood listening, and that brought Karl hope despite how scared and confused he looked. Karl supposed he expected that - it was a lot of information. 

The flowers around the fallen-over tree were ripped from their stems, flying around in the wind that was now spiralling like a tornado around the pond. 

"I don't know what happens next, I haven't gotten that far and I'm too afraid to find out. So that's why I am here, I guess..." a tear started to roll down his cheek, "... and I know it sounds crazy, why wouldn't it? But I need more time with you and this is the only way I know how to get it. So I'm desperate."

Karl held onto the hourglass tightly, and streams of tears fell down his face and onto the spiral on the top. The locket was burning so unbearably hot, and he only had a few seconds left before he was sent back.

"In five days from now... I'm going to come into this town on horseback... and I need you to go and find me. Please. I am begging you."

He didn't get an answer.

When Karl got home, he was disorientated, and he wasn't in the usual place he was in, but he wasn't concerned with that. The first thing he did was find Sapnap - his Sapnap.

He wasn't home, but that wasn't much out of the ordinary at that time of day. He found him throwing axes out by George's old house - still burnt down, which was a good sign that he might have managed to go out of his way. 

When he saw Karl, Sapnap's lips curved into a smile, and he put his axe down flat on the ground. Karl was so excited that when he ran over he tripped on a twig on the ground, which sent him flying forward and into his lover's arms, who caught him like it was a natural instinct.

"Woah there," Sapnap said, balancing Karl in front of him and leaving his hands resting delicately on his shoulders. He looked Karl up and down, confused as to why he was acting so strange and Karl started to laugh. His eyes were filled with tears, but this time he was happy.

Karl places his hands on either side of his face and pulled them together, pressing their lips together messily, and smiling wide as he did. For the first time in a long time, he kissed Sapnap without a care in the world, without a thought about if it would be the last kiss they shared. He poured his heart into every movement he made.

Sapnap was the one who pulled away, much sooner than Karl would have liked.

"I'm sorry...Believe me, I'm really flattered..." Sapnap finally said, moving his hands away and bringing on to scratch the top of his head. Karl felt the atmosphere around his crack and shatter, like glass, and a pit grew in his stomach. "...I haven't been kissed like that in a long time..." 

Karl furrowed his eyebrows, holding his hands out to reach for him but stopping himself before he could make contact. He balled his hands into fists and opened his mouth to say something but nothing came out, he wasn't sure what to say. He tried to piece together what happened, stepping back and reaching to his satchel to grab the hourglass.

He felt so much relief when his fingers grazed over the cool glass, and when he pulled it out he thought for a second that maybe this was just a joke.

But then, like magic, the little hourglass slowly faded into dust and slipped through his fingertips, disappearing completely before the particles hit the ground. 

It was the one rule of time travel: never change the course of events. Doing so caused chaos, completely rewrote the future and almost always it made it worse. It was the one rule.

Rules were made for a reason, and Karl had just found that out the hard way.

"I don't understand..." Karl mumbled, eyes flickering down to the ground and trying to piece together where he went wrong. He didn't change a major event. He was naive enough to believe that it was so insignificant. He looked back up, into his lover's eyes, but they were looking back at him like he was a stranger, "Sapnap I-"

"I'm sorry" he sighed, "I don't know who you are."

**Author's Note:**

> Hi :)
> 
> I hope you enjoyed this. I broke my happy ending rule that I've kept since 2016... whoops.
> 
> So I'm not sure if it's too obvious but this was inspired by a scene from How I Met Your Mother - when I saw it I thought wow this is a perfect idea for karlnap. At first, I thought it was only going to be like 1000 words but then I kept getting ideas and so I kept writing. This is my first time writing for this ship but it won't be my last (probably). 
> 
> Comments and criticism are welcome :) and if you find typos I sincerely apologize.
> 
> If you want to follow me on twitter my @ is salinesltn but I'm horribly unfunny so you've been warned.


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